The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan

New York Times
By FRANK RICH

CINDY SHEEHAN couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing. On this Aug. 6 the president was no less determined to shrug off bad news. Though 14 marine reservists had been killed days earlier by a roadside bomb in Haditha, his national radio address that morning made no mention of Iraq. Once again Mr. Bush was in his bubble, ensuring that he wouldn't see Ms. Sheehan coming. So it goes with a president who hasn't foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001.

When these setbacks happen in Iraq itself, the administration punts. But when they happen at home, there's a game plan. Once Ms. Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war. The Swift Boating is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam.

The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam résumés: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat described by the first President Bush as "courageous" and "a true American hero" for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail.

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real."

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the "liberal media," we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s.

The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to Cindy Sheehan's "wacko" rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget about her dead son. But if much of the 24/7 media has taken the bait, much of the public has not.

The backdrops against which Ms. Sheehan stands - both that of Mr. Bush's what-me-worry vacation and that of Iraq itself - are perfectly synergistic with her message of unequal sacrifice and fruitless carnage. Her point would endure even if the messenger were shot by a gun-waving Crawford hothead or she never returned to Texas from her ailing mother's bedside or the president folded the media circus by actually meeting with her.

The public knows that what matters this time is Casey Sheehan's story, not the mother who symbolizes it. Cindy Sheehan's bashers, you'll notice, almost never tell her son's story. They are afraid to go there because this young man's life and death encapsulate not just the noble intentions of those who went to fight this war but also the hubris, incompetence and recklessness of those who gave the marching orders.

Specialist Sheehan was both literally and figuratively an Eagle Scout: a church group leader and honor student whose desire to serve his country drove him to enlist before 9/11, in 2000. He died with six other soldiers on a rescue mission in Sadr City on April 4, 2004, at the age of 24, the week after four American security workers had been mutilated in Falluja and two weeks after he arrived in Iraq. This was almost a year after the president had declared the end of "major combat operations" from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

According to the account of the battle by John F. Burns in The Times, the insurgents who slaughtered Specialist Sheehan and his cohort were militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric. The Americans probably didn't stand a chance. As Mr. Burns reported, members of "the new Iraqi-trained police and civil defense force" abandoned their posts at checkpoints and police stations "almost as soon as the militiamen appeared with their weapons, leaving the militiamen in unchallenged control."

Yet in the month before Casey Sheehan's death, Mr. Rumsfeld typically went out of his way to inflate the size and prowess of these Iraqi security forces, claiming in successive interviews that there were "over 200,000 Iraqis that have been trained and equipped" and that they were "out on the front line taking the brunt of the violence." We'll have to wait for historians to tell us whether this and all the other Rumsfeld propaganda came about because he was lied to by subordinates or lying to himself or lying to us or some combination thereof.

As The Times reported last month, even now, more than a year later, a declassified Pentagon assessment puts the total count of Iraqi troops and police officers at 171,500, with only "a small number" able to fight insurgents without American assistance. As for Moktada al-Sadr, he remains as much a player as ever in the new "democratic" Iraq. He controls one of the larger blocs in the National Assembly. His loyalists may have been responsible for last month's apparently vengeful murder of Steven Vincent, the American freelance journalist who wrote in The Times that Mr. Sadr's followers had infiltrated Basra's politics and police force.

Casey Sheehan's death in Iraq could not be more representative of the war's mismanagement and failure, but it is hardly singular. Another mother who has journeyed to Crawford, Celeste Zappala, wrote last Sunday in New York's Daily News of how her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was also killed in April 2004 - in Baghdad, where he was providing security for the Iraq Survey Group, which was charged with looking for W.M.D.'s "well beyond the admission by David Kay that they didn't exist."

As Ms. Zappala noted with rage, her son's death came only a few weeks after Mr. Bush regaled the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association banquet in Washington with a scripted comedy routine featuring photos of him pretending to look for W.M.D.'s in the Oval Office. "We'd like to know if he still finds humor in the fabrications that justified the war that killed my son," Ms. Zappala wrote. (Perhaps so: surely it was a joke that one of the emissaries Mr. Bush sent to Cindy Sheehan in Crawford was Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser who took responsibility for allowing the 16 errant words about doomsday uranium into the president's prewar State of the Union speech.)

Mr. Bush's stand-up shtick for the Beltway press corps wasn't some aberration; it was part of the White House's political plan for keeping the home front cool. America was to yuk it up, party on and spend its tax cuts heedlessly while the sacrifice of an inadequately manned all-volunteer army in Iraq was kept out of most Americans' sight and minds. This is why the Pentagon issued a directive at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom forbidding news coverage of "deceased military personnel returning to or departing from" air bases. It's why Mr. Bush, unlike Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, has not attended funeral services for the military dead. It's why January's presidential inauguration, though nominally dedicated to the troops, was a gilded $40 million jamboree at which the word Iraq was banished from the Inaugural Address.

THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Mr. Bush's motorcade left a grieving mother in the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far. The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last backfired, just as the strategy of Swift Boating the war's critics has reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury in Washington. The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq.

Fence sitters are falling down in droves. And the ones who fall on t'other side from El Presidente are cordially encouraging the other side to enlist and fight this war they support so strongly and let some multi-tour soldier come home.

All throughout history, the loud, obnoxious, arrogant shouters of violence have tried to drown out the quiet, stoic, humble voices of peace. The rule of the powerful is..."He who controls the message will control the zeitgeist." Fortunately there is a much more powerful force in the universe than the manic, insane tirades of the perpetually myopic. This much higher force speaks to us in our private moments of reflection and calm. Humankind cannot escape this higher force's message. The Master of the Universe whispers to us in guarded moments of the chance of peace and of what he truly wishes for all of his children here on Planet Earth.

Many forums out there on the internet have become nothing more than mouthpieces for the satanic elite. Those in positions of power understand the power of communication and the media, and will thus seek to control and influence any form of media that starts to grow in importance with the general population. There are many professional disinformationalists on many forums who seek to sway and spin the minds of the forum members. As an example, Freerepublic.com has become infested with such professional spin-meisters who serve quite another master than the truth. The slander of Cindy Sheehan by so many is quite amazing. But there is method to their madness...

At the Nuremberg Trials, Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goering, aptly explained the process: “The people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

I am thankful for your input. You are wise and have helped to calm my anger. No one has the answer to what is really happening around us. We can create a chain of eductation and information that will make a difference. We have to tell, tell, tell!

Educate, read project for the new American Century, penned by Rumsfeld, Chenny and others in 1998. This is a chilling account of the future from the past. It shows regardless of what we even now know from the Downing Street Minutes that this government had war plans for Iraq and Iran. Where is the media? We need to be caught up on the latest murder in Aruba, or find out what is happening with the newest reality show. I am sick! I am sick because we are now a country that believes it is okay to torture and hold people in prison even though they are innocent. I am sick that this country CAN TAKE THE WORLD TO THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR DISASTER AND NOT BLINK AN EYE. THEY TALK OF USING NUCLEAR ARMS. Read the project for the new American century and ask your self what do we as human beings need to do to make this government accountable. I hold the thought in my heart that together we can change this evil tital wave of inhumanity and greed.

Educate, read project for the new American Century, penned by Rumsfeld, Chenny and others in 1998. This is a chilling account of the future from the past. It shows regardless of what we even now know from the Downing Street Minutes that this government had war plans for Iraq and Iran. Where is the media? We need to be caught up on the latest murder in Aruba, or find out what is happening with the newest reality show. I am sick! I am sick because we are now a country that believes it is okay to torture and hold people in prison even though they are innocent. I am sick that this country CAN TAKE THE WORLD TO THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR DISASTER AND NOT BLINK AN EYE. THEY TALK OF USING NUCLEAR ARMS. Read the project for the new American century and ask your self what do we as human beings need to do to make this government accountable. I hold the thought in my heart that together we can change this evil tital wave of inhumanity and greed.

Educate, read project for the new American Century, penned by Rumsfeld, Chenny and others in 1998. This is a chilling account of the future from the past. It shows regardless of what we even now know from the Downing Street Minutes that this government had war plans for Iraq and Iran. Where is the media? We need to be caught up on the latest murder in Aruba, or find out what is happening with the newest reality show. I am sick! I am sick because we are now a country that believes it is okay to torture and hold people in prison even though they are innocent. I am sick that this country CAN TAKE THE WORLD TO THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR DISASTER AND NOT BLINK AN EYE. THEY TALK OF USING NUCLEAR ARMS. Read the project for the new American century and ask your self what do we as human beings need to do to make this government accountable. I hold the thought in my heart that together we can change this evil tital wave of inhumanity and greed.

Everyone who cares...keep up the pressure, whether it's writers of Frank Rich's skill and stature, or those of us whose circle of influence may only be family, friends, and co-workers. This war was not a mistake...it was premeditated murder. I'm ashamed to admit that I supported this war when our government sold it in 2002, and only started realizing the truth a few months ago. At 50 years old I should have known better. God bless Cindy Sheehan and all the other grieving parents, spouses, children, family, and friends of our dead and injured soldiers and marines. They have suffered for a cause that turned out to be a lie, but they showed real guts and character in service of our great nation. They deserve from us the greatest honor and financial care we can bestow.

Frank Rich talks straight about Cindy Sheehan and the country, but there is a whole lot more to say. Our failure as a nation to reckon with Peak Oil fails to justify mass murder, yet admitting as much doesn't correct the situation. Peak Oil remains a serious problem that only worsens daily, as will the deadly solutions. It is a problem that Cheney takes deadly seriously, and so should we all.
Regardless of what one thinks about Cheney's or Bush's personal and considerable conflicts of interest on the matter of energy policy, it remains our problem, one of our own creation. In their professional capacity they insist "the American way of life is not negotiable." However loaded with BS is such a statement, many Americans might sadly agree--the inescapable facts of limited resources and population carrying capacity should not apply to Americans--we can simply nuke our way out of it. Murdering competitors and intoxicating the world is, in fact, one immoral and self-limiting option. Clearly Cheney believes that he who nukes first, nukes best, and the American people, who love their way of life, will come around to appreciate this. Personally, I believe it would be another epic humanitarian disaster to attack Iran. Cindy, AfterDowningStreet, bloggers, et al, may yet wake us collectively to the Iraq lies, but let's not forget the bigger picture: Cheney understands the scale of the problem, and wants full control over Central Asia, the Mideast, Venezuela, etc.. Although Bush/Cheney are failing miserably and sucking bilge water publicly, they are hell-bent on their purpose, and will almost certainly construe failing public support as their last chance to effect global domination. Having wasted so much, having destabilized Iraq, they have no choice but to vindicate their grand design. They are simply hell-bent humans. Let's hope for quick indictments from Fitzgerald that could thwart nuclear holocaust in Iran, and beyond. We'll still have to deal with serious energy, economic, and international policies, including stabilizing Iraq and making some type of restitution. I can't be in Crawford in person, but I am psychologically deep in the heart of Texas, because our collective talent, resolve, and foresight must exceed that of these psychopathic ogres.

Better late than never. Atlast somebody from the MSM talking candidly. But where were you when your Paper was on the forefront beating the war drums. NYT knew all along your Govt was lying and yet chose to publish those lies without any remorse fully aware of the consequences. It is all so simple and obvious. The people who own NYT and the other MSM papers and TV Channels are the same people who hold the strings of this rotten Govt. What can you expect of a paper that believes that killing half a million Iraqi women and children(that occurred because of sanctions) was necessary for the country's security.

2.3 million references on the web is great; hopefully this will translate to lots of protesters on the ground. Are there concerted efforts to get people in place? Is anyone organizing anything to counter the Sept 11 Freedom March being organized by Rumsfeld? In the guise of commemorating the Sept 11 deaths at the Pentagon, this Freedom March is really a march in support of the war in Iraq using taxpayer money. This needs to be exposed and countered. Does anyone know of any organized efforts to do so?

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